This project is a bit different from the more common belt designs but I'm sharing it anyway since some of you may be interested in the chain work for your own projects or give you other ideas that you may want to pursue.
The goals of this project were as follows:
- Enforce chaste of the wearer through a contoured crotch-plate.
- Restrict common movements of the wearer, such as sitting down, running, or taking larger steps.
- The skirt needs to be non-removable by the wearer.
- The skirt needs to be heavy, noisy, and thus a constant reminder they are wearing it.
The first parameter isn't part of this thread because my plannisher needs to be repaired and the part in question is on backorder without a date. Once that's working again, I'll show you how to make a contoured crotch-plate and tie it into the rest of the skirt. I could use a hammer and a shot bag but I'll get a better end result with the plannisher.
The first step is to select and measure your subject thoroughly. You need the narrowest part of the waist, the widest part of the hips, and a point on the subject's thighs that is narrower than his/her hips. You also need the measurements in between, following the contour of their body, as illustrated in this diagram:
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With those measurements, you have to decide what kind of chain to purchase. While visiting Domme-Depot (eeer, Home Depot), I spied several rolls of "jack chain" which has machine-folded links rather than welded links. This would allow me to manipulate the links easily with vice grips, so I purchased a roll of it for $60 plus a pair of cheap-o needle nose vice grips:
Here is a close-up of jack-chain. It's made of stiff wire folded into links, with a 90 degree twist to it. While my local Home Depot only carries it nickel plated, it's available from other suppliers in other forms - bare, zinc-plated, painted. If you want to electroplate the finished product with a non-toxic finish, bare would be best.
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Once you have the measurements of your subject, it's time to figure out how many links of the chain you purchased to make those dimensions. The jack chain I bought happens to have 0.97" spacing so this was very easy. My male subject given to me on loan (not my husband) has a 32" waist at the narrowest point, 39" hips at the largest/fleshiest part of his derriere, and a 35" thigh circumference. That means with this chain the waist would have 32 links, 39 links, and 35" links respectively. These measurements were taken with tailor's tape and not pulled terribly tight as not to stretch the measuring tape.
Ooops, I cut off the waist taking this picture. Sorry about that. Anyway, I didn't like the fit so I removed one link from the waist and relocked it so now the waist is one inch smaller than measuring his waist with measuring tape. It's tight, but not too tight. It won't cut off any circulation or damage internal organs but according to the subject it's slightly unpleasant and that works for me being the sadist that I am
This also gave me the opportunity to verify the waist-to-hip vertical as well, using a piece of chain.
The next step is to start making the waist-to-hip part of the skirt. The centerline of the skirt, which lines up vertically with the wearer's navel, is the left edge in this picture. The top link hanging off will have a padlock through it, and the bottom one will be opened, looped over the other end, and closed to form a complete circle.
Then, it's just the simple matter of attaching short sections of chains across the waist/hip chains and closing them into place. Since the subject's abdomen is flat, the vertical chains start off evenly spaced like so:
Since the left side of the picture will be centered on the subject's body, the same straight verticals need to be on the other end. To keep things symmetrical, I added one vertical on each side back and forth. Once you get towards the middle of the waist and hip chains, you're going to have a large gap on the longer hip chain while the top won't - that's because the subject's hips are larger than their waist. That space can be filled in by staggering the last several chains on the hip chain, or, left completely open as I have done with the intention of hammering out a metal trapazoid to fit into that space. You'll see the triangle opening in a couple of the pictures further down.
Once you go all around, you can close the final chain link of the hips with the pliers, and add the padlock on top. You'll now have a "cone" made out of chain, and you should test-fit what you've made to the subject to make sure you didn't get things totally off kilter. Here's what I've done so far, laying on the floor:
The next step is to work on the hip to thigh section, so I started adding vertical chains evenly spaced off the hip chain. The open diamond in the center actually becomes a trapazoid when worn, so please don't be confused by that. That area is where I'll be putting in a piece of metal shaped on my plannisher. You should be able to see the difference in length between the waist chain (bottom of picture) and the hip chain (middle of picture).
